Junior Boys Again...This Time With Feeling!

Last time Junior Boys came to town, we weren't all that impressed. They lacked a connection with the crowd and we ended up paying more attention to the audience than the band. The music was good though. Well, this show musically was again up to par, with the band playing "all the hits" that their KEXP-listening audience expected. The difference this time was the rapport between band and audience, brought forth by the change of venue (this show was at Chop Suey, while the last was at Neumos). In our mind, Chop Suey reasserted its position as our favorite show venue.

So how did a simple venue change make so much difference? The largest difference is size. A sold out show at Chop Suey is definitely annoying to deal with, but not oppressively so as it is at Neumos. The crowd was definitely compressed, but while it felt full, it wasn't enough to feel claustrophobic - you could always find a spot to call your own. Sound-wise everything felt very dialed-in, and being so close to the stage (and thus the Junior Boys) made the whole thing feel intimate - just us and a few hundred of our favorite strangers. It made all the difference in the world, since we were seeing what amounted to the same set we'd seen before. It wasn't until the end of the show when we were ready to call it quits, a big improvement on the prior experience. Other people left wanting more, but we left having had just enough.

[One people-watching note - We saw a woman who spent the entirety of the show dancing with the wall. Our theory is that the building's reverberations agreed with her in a special way we don't really want to understand. We like Chop Suey, but not that much.]

Image by flickr user basic_sounds.